Publicising Go Tournaments

As a tournament organiser you need to do the following (among other things,
these are just the ones that require liaising with us):

Pick a date so as to avoid a clash.

Get details onto the master list of tournaments.

Get details onto our web site.

Get details into our newsletter.

Have entry forms circulated.

Arrange for the necessary Go-playing equipment.

Choosing a date.

If you are planning a tournament and wish to choose a date for it, first look
at tournament list and select a suitable empty spot. Preferably select an empty
weekend, as there are less than 52 events per year, and a date that is not near another event
in your area. When you have chosen it you should check with the
tournament coordinator (tournament-coordinator at britgo.org) that it is acceptable and
get to get it reserved on the calendar. Your event can be shown as provisional
until you confirm the details.
Note that most tournaments are annual events, so when planning an event more than a year in
advance please be aware of this as events are not normally listed more than a year in advance,
if they are annual events, unless a confirmed date is known.

It has been pointed out that it is easier for young players to attend
multi-day events if they happen during the school holidays. The easiest way
to discover when the school holidays are is check the web page of your local authority.

Getting the details listed

To achieve steps two to four from the list above, you need only tell the
tournament coordinator about your event. He will add it to the list
of forthcoming tournaments, which is the master list of tournaments. The
Newsletter gets its information from the web site, so there is no need to
inform the Newsletter editor separately, but ensure a contact phone number is listed
for players who are not online.

If you need a web page setting up then the coordinator can do this too, including
a form for submission of entries. Just supply your entry form and a description of what
you require. Alternatively produce your own page and tell him the URL to link to from
our calendar page. A link to a map page is always advisable.

Circulating entry forms

We don't normally circulate entry forms any longer, but could do if there is no other way. This will normally only be via email.

To get the entry form for your tournament circulated to our members, you
need to send a master copy to the newsletter editor (newsletter @ britgo.org) in time for the
relevant issue. Entry forms should be on one or two sides of A4. Send a copy
by email (in rtf or PDF format).

Arranging equipment

The other service covered by the tournament levy (a fee per head paid by all
tournaments to us) is use of the our tournament equipment. You need
to contact the tournament coordinator (tournament-coordinator at britgo.org) to arrange this.

Web publicity

These days, a contact email address for your tournament is essential. In
fact, nowadays, every tournament on the list does
have an email contact.

Providing a web page, hosted by yourself or by us,
for your tournament is also a very good idea.
Because as well as us linking to it, you can also get local listing sites
to point to it, and people can find it by web searching. Several events
have had journalists find their event through their web page.

You may also announce your tournament on the Gotalk e-mail list.
We request that limit the number of emails you send to the list be kept within
reasonable limits. (One should probably be sufficient).

We will also announce your event to our members and others on Facebook and directly by
sending out an invitation a few months in advance.

Local Publicity

You can promote go, and your local club, by getting a story about your
tournament into the local media. The local press are always looking out for
stories, especially with photographs. It is not hard to write a basic press
release. The key elements are the phrases “Press Release: For Immediate
Use” (or embargoed, but in any case you send it out a few days before the
event); “Photo-call: (specific time and place)”, so they know when
to turn up; a few paragraphs making up a half-written story about your event,
which they can buff up; contact details for you, of which phone number is the
most important. Fax this to the paper, marking it “for attention of”
(name) if you have a contact there, otherwise “News-desk”.

Pictures taken with a digital camera can be e-mailed to local newspapers
together with a press release. This saves them doing any work and can result in
good coverage in the local papers.

Note: Fax is now very generally available in offices, in high street bureaux,
and on people's PCs.

Make sure the web news editor (web-news-editor at britgo.org) gets a report of your event
so that you will get a write-up of
your tournament into his BGJ tournaments column and the news
pages on this web site; this will also cause a report to appear in the next Newsletter.

If you have used the GoDraw V6 program then you can get results to the web and ratings people easily by simply
emailing your tournament file to the results officer (results at britgo.org). You will normally find the file in
c:\GodrawSys\Tours and it will normally have a name including the year like MiltonKeynes_10.gdt for example.

When you do send the file it is helpful to include peripheral data such as location, komi, and time limits
as these are needed for the ratings system. If you have new people entering the tournament as No Club,
it is helpful for purposes of identification to state their nearest town.

You can follow up local paper publicity by faxing them the main results. The
point of this is to have them use the information to complete a story based on
an earlier press release, or to use as classified results on a sports page.

It is good practice to follow up any local publicity by asking whether it has
generated any inquiries. Even better, though, is to try to get your contact
details into the original story.

Please send any press releases to our President, who will collate a
database of the best (for putting on the web subsequently) so that people do not
have to reinvent the wheel all the time.

Dealing with the results if you do not use the godraw program

You are encouraged to use the program because it encapsulates all our/EGF
rules for doing the draw. Such is the complexity that it would take a long time
to do the draw manually sticking rigorously to all the rules. However if you do
wish to run your tournament using the traditional card and pencil method then
please review our handbook on doing the draw.

We will still help you to get your results to the website and to the EGF
ratings system if you do the following:

List each player’s Name, Grade, and Club.

For each round produce one or more sheets of paper listing the draw and the handicap allocated if any.

Circle the winner’s name on each board.

Post a copy of the sheets to the results officer (results at britgo.org).

Of course 1. and 2. are standard practise if you are doing a manual draw. On
getting this information the results officer will enter the draw and results into
the GoDraw program and produce the files which for onward dispatch. The
turnaround depends on the number of players and the number of rounds. Fitting in
with work commitments, he can usually manage a typical 3 rounder of 50 players by
Wednesday if he get the results Sunday night.

You can, of course, carry out this last step yourself (which is greatly
appreciated) if you wish by downloading
the program. Then all you need to do is email the file as described above.